["Missing link" fossil found]
My grandpa had really bad arthritis. When he died they buried him in a coffin so that people wouldn't accidentally unearth him years later and hale him as a missing like as well.
Please keep in mind, you don't know that a fossil had any children. Also, why aren't there more of these fossils, if this is a presentation of an entire STAGE in time? Could it simply be a deformity, or an extinct organism?
54 comments
I'm not even sure what the hell they are implying by this statement.
If the internet had a body, Y! Answers would clearly be the prostate.
I don't know what your Grandpa has to do with evolution but it's doubtful that Ida had a civilization that could bury her in a coffin.
Also, a fossil is generally held as a representation of a species... you know on second thought, remain ignorant and die an early death when medical science tries to cure whatever disease you get when you get older.
"Also, why aren't there more of these fossils,"
"if this is a presentation of an entire STAGE in time?"
"Could it simply be a deformity,"
"or an extinct organism?"
Paleontologists aren't concerned with "missing links" as creationists define them. If you define a "missing link" as an actual ancestor, most people can't even identify the "missing link" between themselves and their great-great-great grandparents.
Nowadays, the best proof of evolution comes from molecular data. Using pretty much the same process they use for paternity testing, they can show relationships between organisms, and they mostly agree with the fossils.
1. Your grandfather was buried because of custom. In the Western world, we bury our dead in coffins.
2. So what? We don't say "This individual fossil was our ancestor". We say "This species might have been our ancestor".
3. Fossilisation is an extremely rare process that requires a lot of conditions being just right at and after the moment of death. We're astoundingly lucky we have as many fossils as we do.
4. We tend to compare our fossils to other fossils to make sure it's not a previously existing species, so I don't think this is a deformity. As for "extinct species"...didn't you just agree with us?
Yeah. I know what you mean. My grand-daddy had a deformed head and mouth. His skull looked like a giant reptiles and he had 6 inch long sharp pointy teeth. Some hoity toity university bozo said it was a dinosaur skull.
And you should have seen my hairy Uncle Harry. He sure fooled those scientists with the massive curved tusks sticking out of his face. And my, was his nose a long one, amongst other things. Sometimes, my Aunt Elly used to say to him, "My, what big ears you got Harry".
I always said that they should have buried him in a coffin instead of just chucking him in a tar-pit.
1. It's a monkey.
Aah man, Ida's "missing link" hype is hurting the science so much. Ida is no missing link!
It's a great discovery, an important discovery... I mean, it's nearly intact and totally awesome! but it's not the little knit that was missing and suddenly confirms the evolution theory, like the media makes it sound like! EVERY fossil is a link! EVERYTHING points towards evolution! Ida or not!
Oh, and it's 47 millions years old anyway, creationist. "Deformity" or not... The earth's not 6000 years old.
A bunch of Hovind-inspired bullcrap.
/My grandpa had really bad arthritis. When he died they buried him in a coffin so that people wouldn't accidentally unearth him years later and hale him as a missing like as well./
Only one Neandertal skeleton was know to have arthritis, so don't make generalizations. All you need to do is place a human skull next to a Neandertal one to see the difference. Oh,and we stopped using "missing link" as a technical term a while ago.
/Please keep in mind, you don't know that a fossil had any children. Also, why aren't there more of these fossils, if this is a presentation of an entire STAGE in time? Could it simply be a deformity, or an extinct organism?/
As a student who hopes to become a paleontologist, this was painful to read...
Afaik, if you discover a female fossil it is sometimes possible to see the physical effects of childbirth.
Iow, you FAIL.
Btw, does anyone else find it fucking hysterical that every single fossil we dig up beyond a certain depth is unequivocally a mutant according to these morons?
"My grandpa had really bad arthritis."
And that's interesting because? ...
Yeah, that never happened before.
"so that people wouldn't accidentally unearth him years later and hale him as a missing like as well."
I'm guessing you're grandpa was a, shall we say, very interesting looking specimen, eh? Maybe because his mother and father were also brother and sister?
Another answer from that page:
"This would be impossible 47 million years ago there was
Ow. My Brain!
and:
"How can they prove that the fossil is 47 million years old. Just because they say it is so, doesn't make it true."
dumbfuck.
continuing the numbskullery:
"It's a long way from proving evolution. lol"
The answers on that thread are piles of fail.
"or an extinct organism?"
that one. you were correct there. You do understand extinction, right? oh, you don't.
People are buried in coffins to prevent the toxins in their decomposing bodies from contaminating the earth, thus greatly reducing the spread of disease. And there's no guarantee he won't be unearthed many generations from now. About 6 years ago floods in Missouri unearthed an entire cemetery and washed all the coffins down the river. Being in coffins didn't prevent that, it just saved the sight of it from being even more gruesome.
And it's "hail" not "hale". And "link" not "like".
Please keep in mind, you don't know that a fossil had any children.
Species don't have only a single member; they have whole populations, whose existence can be easily inferred from this one specimen. Even if this one specimen is a unique mutation, the odds are it won't significantly differ from its parent population - speciation requires many mutations across many generations. The statistical likelihood is that lots of them had kids (the population couldn't have been viable if they didn't) even if this one didn't.
Also, why aren't there more of these fossils, if this is a presentation of an entire STAGE in time?
Statistics again - the odds of any single dead organism getting fossilized are quite low, so for some species with a certain population size and duration of existence the odds of getting even one fossil aren't great. Besides, there could be more fossils of the same specie that we haven't found yet - in such cases, there must always be a finite period when only one has been found before we find any others, during which people like you invariably complain about the fact that only one has been found (what, you don't think you're saying anything we've not heard countless times before, do you?). The reason one finds vast numbers of certain other fossils, like trilobites, will either be because there were lots more of them, they existed for a far longer period, their natural habitat was more conducive to fossilization than others, or some combination of these.
"When he died, they buried him in a coffin so that people wouldn't accidentally unearth him years later and hale [sic] him as a missing like [sic] as well."
What the bloody FUCK?
ETA: I'm all for burying your dead, but why the hell do we pump 'em full of chemicals and seal 'em in wooden, sometimes metal, boxes?
Doesn't it make more sense for the body to decay naturally, and provide nutrients for another living thing, like the grass and trees?
"Could it simply be a deformity...?"
The deformed individual usually becomes the meal of another individual, in short order. Hence, a mere coprolite component. More difficult to identify, for sure.
Hey buddy, guess what? If people do unearth him years later, he WILL be considered a missing link, provided we've changed enough.
With not having their nose buried in a poorly written book, called the bible, scientists would not label something by single criteria.
And yes, you can tell if a female has given birth, as the pelvis would show evidence of it, striations, and microscopic cracks.
And it is an extinct organism, as it no longer exists in that form, but as us. So you are partly right on that one.
"When he died they buried him in a coffin so that people wouldn't accidentally unearth him years later and hale him as a missing like as well."
Newsflash: Man given traditional burial for retarded reasons.
"Also, why aren't there more of these fossils, if this is a presentation of an entire STAGE in time?"
Because fossils, for any given STAGE in time, are RARE.
"Could it simply be a deformity, or an extinct organism?"
It could be a deformity, but it is considered unlikely that every fossil we have has some form of deformity that wasn't something expressed in its genetics and related to other members of the same species that came before and after. And, yes they probably are extinct organisms. Hence, why we need the fossils in order to even be aware of their existence.
We are pretty sure that one is extinct, yes....and it doesn't matter if it had children or not, for it to be in existence there had to be more of its kind and any of those could have had children, for they did exist long enough to leave at leas one fossil.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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